Most people agree that full autonomy will be a big part of the future of driving. The question is when. Tesla may have been making all the headlines with the trial of its Robotaxi in Austin, Texas and the San Franciso Bay Area, but Tensor reckons it will hit the market sooner. The California-based company says it could sell you a full Level 4 car in 2026.
Tensor: Level 4 Designed For Personal Ownership
“This is the world’s first Level 4 fully autonomous vehicle that’s been designed from the ground up specifically for personal ownership,” says Hugo Fozzati, Chief Business Officer, Tensor, speaking at Abu Dhabi Autonomous Week. “We announced this in August of this year, but effectively, it’s the world’s first one that you’ll be able to have in your garage. We’ve designed everything specifically around Level 4. Henry Ford commercialized the Model T around the internal combustion engine. Elon designed everything around the battery with software, and that’s why we have electric vehicles. We’ve effectively done the same thing, but we’ve designed our vehicle around AI.”
Tensor is far from alone with this vision. Xpeng’s Brian Gu also talks about AI defined vehicles, and Volvo’s ES90 luxury sedan has been built around future autonomous capabilities. “Everything in our car has been designed to maximize the AI,” continues Fozzati. “We have 17-megapixel cameras.” There are 34 cameras in total. “We have five LiDARs. In total we have over 100 sensors on this car.”
Tensor has designed its Robocar to maximize the angle of vision of all these sensors, rather than the other way around. The company has even created its own LiDAR. The whole vehicle is completely custom built around autonomy, rather than having the autonomous systems bolted onto an existing vehicle. “This is 100% designed internally to maximize the AI,” says Fozzati. “Everything is integrated. It’s not bolted on. Everything else in the industry is retrofitted. Ours is native. Everything is designed specifically.”
Even the cameras have their own wipers, and there’s a massive fluid tank to supply these. “If you look at a normal vehicle, it has a certain size of liquid tank, and you’re going to run through that in very short time,” says Fozzati. “These are all things we thought of that add a lot. This is why taking an existing vehicle and retrofitting it would be difficult, because we’re not asking people to drive it, so we’re not going to ask them to maintain it. This is self-cleaning. The sensors also self-calibrate.”
The Tensor Robocar even has two-way microphones so the vehicle can talk to first responder emergency services. “This is an agentic vehicle, so we have our own proprietary LLM in the car,” says Fozzati. This can be used to instruct the Robocar on destinations. “You can have a relationship with the car.” The LLM can use internal cameras to recognize gestures. “You can say, close that window. With the cameras it will know that you’re pointing to that window over there. It will, based on the microphones, know that people in the rear are talking.” It could even recognize tone of voice. “It’s not just voice recognition of the 90s. It’s not really a car. This is a robot.”
Packing In Tensor Technology
The Robocar is a large vehicle, 5.5m long, like a BMW i7. Fozzati claims that the size is necessary to house the sensors and computing. “There’s never been in history so much technology packed inside of a car,” he says. “Redundancy is key for Level 4. We have a redundant braking system, steering, power, sensing, and compute. We’ve got redundancy down to the fuse level. If the fuse has a problem, it will continue to drive. You just get an alert on your phone saying the car needs to go drive itself to get its fuse fixed. We’ve done this in conjunction with the largest Tier Ones in the world. On the braking side is Bosch, and steering side is ZF.”
While the focus is on Level 4 autonomy, the Tensor Robocar is meant to cover every level below that as well. Key to delivering this is a steering wheel that is hidden away for Level 4 driving, but can fold out for levels that require driver input, or even manual driving, in a similar fashion to the Audi Grandsphere – except that was a concept, and the Tensor is approaching production. Tensor is hoping to offer driving pleasure alongside hands-off autonomy.
“If you’ve got a personal vehicle, you want to be able to take it everywhere,” says Fozzati. “It’s not Level 5, it’s Level 4.” A Level 5 car is permanently autonomous, whereas Level 4 is only autonomous in pre-approved, geofenced areas. Outside of these locations, it won’t be possible to enter Level 4 mode. Only lower levels of assisted driving will be available. How the car hands over between modes will depend on the location. Most likely, it will pull over safely at the boundary of the Level 4 zone and prompt the human driver to take over. A regulatory requirement of Level 4 is also that there is teleguidance – with a remote human monitoring and able to take over if necessary.
However, Tensor claims its technology doesn’t require GPS mapping to work. “We view mapping as an extra sensor,” says Fozzati. If the map is accurate, the car can use it, but if recent roadworks aren’t on the map, it can function without. “It can use all the other sensors that we have. This is why we’ve taken a very sensor rich approach.” However, Tensor still faces similar scaling challenges to other companies offering autonomous system – its systems need extensive testing in every location they will be deployed. This takes time.
“We’ve been in stealth mode for the last six years building this car,” says Fozzati. “We don’t release things prematurely. The whole reason for us designing and building this car is precisely for scalability and safety, because if you’re just retrofitting vehicles, you can’t scale that. It’s not safe. It’s not what the consumer deserves. We’re going to commercialize when and where we feel it is the right time to do so. We are on track to commercialize in 2026, and 2027 will be our launch markets.”
Six-Figure Autonomous Tensor Luxury
However, Tensor hasn’t announced its pricing yet. “It will be six figures, given all the technology, the proprietary design,” says Fozzati. “But bear in mind it’s probably $80-90,000 a year if you have a human driver. This is a luxury, premium vehicle.” One of the first markets to see the Tensor Robocar on its roads will be Abu Dhabi. “We signed an MOU with Abu Dhabi’s Integrated Transport Centre, also other regulatory bodies in the UAE like RegLab, RTA in Dubai. To make this a reality, you need to have strong partnerships. We’ve been doing that with the plethora of suppliers and partners like Nvidia and Bosch.”
However, the central feature is its autonomous driving supercomputer. “It’s the most powerful supercomputer in a car ever,” explains Fozzati. “We have eight Nvidia Drive AGX Thor chips from Nvidia, with full redundancy. This delivers 8,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS).” In comparison, the Volvo ES90’s computer offers 508 TOPS. Fozzati stresses that being able to calculate so much locally facilitates privacy, with end-to-end encryption protecting any outside communication. This is essential with so many sensors collecting data.
A big debate with self-driving vehicles is who is responsible in case of an accident, which affects insurance. Tensor has partnered with global insurer Marsh for this. “They’re one of the world’s largest insurance companies, and they’re going to write the world’s first insurance policy for personal ownership,” says Eric Odell, CFO, Tensor. “They’re the broker, but we’re going to have underwriters that we work with.” However, insurance is different for a Level 4 autonomous vehicle. “In Level 4 mode, we as the OEM take responsibility for our technology. Manual mode is different, so zero, Level 3, Level 2 is human.” In these modes, the human driver still must be able to step in during an incident, so responsibility lies with them, although this will depend on local regulations.
There are local state regulations in the US already enabling this technology, such as California, because of the Waymo robotaxi precedent, while federal regulations are being developed. This is a slow, gradual process – something every company promoting autonomous vehicles faces, such as Rimac’s Verne, which is looking to launch robotaxis across Europe. The UAE, particularly Abu Dhabi, is putting itself at the forefront here. During the DRIFTx conference at Abu Dhabi Autonomous Week, Tensor signed an agreement with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and Abu Dhabi Mobility. “Everything’s going in the right direction,” says Odell. “We plan to commercialize in the UAE in the second half of 2026, with Europe to follow.”
Could Tensor Get A Lyft From Ride Hailing?
Strangely for an automaker focusing on the luxury market, Tensor has also partnered with ride-hailing company Lyft. “If you just look at the vast majority of vehicles that are produced and sold today, 80 to 90% are owned by consumers, the balance is owned by fleet companies,” says Odell. “What’s unique about us is that, because we’ve designed this vehicle from the ground up, and it’s a production vehicle not retrofitted, we can do both. We can sell both to fleet owners, but also to consumers. With Lyft, what we announced is twofold. Number one is they are purchasing a fleet of vehicles from us. The other thing is that this can work for you while you’re sleeping. You have your side hustle. You can plug it into the Lyft network, and it can make money for you. We’re really excited about this. You’re utilizing an asset much more. The Robocar will come off the line Lyft enabled.”
It’s questionable whether you will pay six figures for a luxury vehicle and then hire it out to strangers. A cheaper version could be more appropriate, and Tensor does have this on its roadmap. “With economies of scale, the price will come down in subsequent models,” says Odell. However, this won’t be immediate. “We’ve taken a very sensor rich approach, put in a lot of technology, because when it comes to people’s lives and safety, you really can’t compromise.” Either way, Tensor is on target with the first Level 4 car commercially available for personal ownership in 2026, which will set another benchmark in the inexorable trend towards a self-driving future.
